Reply #48: Excuse me?

[BevHarris]

First, I shut down a lucrative business to do this and have gone without a paycheck for more than a year; had to borrow money to pay my mortgage and literally sat in a house with no heat, wearing an electric blanket, because my fingers got numb trying to type the last two chapters of the book. Yes, I will become an employee and for the first time in 12 months I will get a paycheck. I'm excited. I can fix my sink. What's your problem?

Next, the amount of travel needed to do the kickbacks investigation is considerable. The reason we don't have investigative reporters anymore is that newspapers don't have the budget to pay them. So they have to do their investigating only locally, or on the Internet or the phone.

As we learned when Andy and I broke the "five felons" story, you get dynamite stuff when you go knocking on doors. I would not have gotten this story, had I not happened in on that meeting in Mercer County, Ohio. Next we will be doing a major investigation in Texas, and we have at least six more states with pieces of the puzzle. That requires donors with checkbooks of all sizes. Donors with larger checkbooks require 501(c)(3) status. It was a pain in the ass to set up this corporation, and it sidetracked me for over two weeks, and I would not have done it if it wasn't truly important to do the research and education needed to make our electoral system more secure.

I didn't see you objecting to Verified Voting (a 501c3 nonprofit) or Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I do find it extremely odd that, according to a credible e-mail that just came through my mailbox, an individual, a blind woman with eight children, has apparently been trying to expose this story since last December, and e-mailed people affiliated with the Electronic Frontier Foundation FOUR TIMES trying to get help, and this happened more than six months ago. She had gone so far as to file a case herself on RICO statutes, against Diebold, the National Federation of the Blind, and 10 banks.

That amazed me. It turns out she had put the matter in court way back in December and had sent all the details to others involved in the voting integrity community, and somehow they didn't go public with it.

If a voting organization knew about it, but decided not to go public with it, I would call this behavior hypocritical. And if this behavior relates to cases filed under seal for personal gain, I would say that it borders on treason. Counties bought these unauditable machines because they were bullied by the NFB lawsuits. People lost their votes because of this. And, had Black Box Voting not taken this public, this shakedown would have continued.

Bev